First Real Greek Bailout: Electricity

While Greece has had its fair-share of EURs funneled to it and through it over the course of the last year or two, it appears they have now created their first 'internal' bailout as things go from bad to worse. As Athens News reports, Greece will provide EUR250mm in emergency funds to its ailing electricity providers to prevent a California-style energy crisis. This liquidity injection to the country's power utlities was yet another unintended consequence of government intervention action. An increasing number of consumers stopped paying their electricity bills following the TROIKA's Greek government's infliction of EUR1.7bn property taxation via the electricity providers. The main power utility PPC had a liquidity hole blown through it as non-payments mounted and while regulators claimed the system needed at least EUR350mm to stay afloat, the government has agreed to allow PPC to hold EUR250mm of the property tax it has collected on behalf of the state until June 30 - by which time, it is hoped the utility will have managed to secure other lending facilities. Quite an incredible move - to force the electricity provider to gather the property taxes - and while this attempt clearly failed we suspect the next move will be food-and-water-rationing without proof of tax payment.

Greece will provide 250 million euros in emergency funds to its ailing electricity providers to prevent a California-style energy crisis, government officials said on Friday.

The liquidity injection removes the risk of a financial chain reaction which, according to regulators, was threatening to bring the country's electricity system to its knees.

The temporary aid will shore up the accounts of main power utility PPC, allowing it to maintain operations and reimburse other suppliers of electricity and natural gas on whom the smooth functioning of the country's energy system depends.

"The measure was taken to bolster PPC's liquidity position," one official told Reuters after a cabinet meeting that authorised the move.

Greece's energy market has fallen into disarray due to a combination of stagnant power demand, rising fuel costs and a government decision to use PPC as a tax collection vehicle.

An increasing number of consumers stopped paying their electricity bills after the government started collecting a 1.7 billion euro property tax through them last year, in a desperate effort to meet its budget targets under an EU/IMF bailout.

Non-payments blew a hole into the accounts of PPC, which is Greece's biggest power producer and its sole electricity retailer. PPC, which posted a record loss in the fourth quarter, is also the biggest client for upstart producers generating about 23 percent of Greece's electricity.

The liquidity crunch sparked fears of a power meltdown like the one that happened in 2001 in California, which suffered large-scale blackouts after its energy market collapsed.

In a paper released earlier this week, Greek electricity regulator RAE said the system needed an immediate liquidity injection of at least 350 million euros to stay afloat.

The government partly heeded the regulator's call on Friday, allowing PPC to retain until June 30 about 250 million euros of the property tax it has collected on behalf of the state.

This will be a temporary solution until the company's cash situation improves later this year, officials said. PPC said last week it agreed terms for a 960 million euro bank loan to cope with the liquidity crunch and roll over 1.12 billion euros of maturing debt later this year.

Energy is a sore point in the country's relations with its lenders. The EU and the IMF have been pressuring Athens to introduce more competition in its 5-billion euro retail power market by deregulating electricity prices and abolishing PPC's monopoly over coal, the country's cheapest and most abundant energy source. (Reuters)

The Greeple are doing it by the book; killing themselves and not taking any of the guilty with them. Maybe some Greeks should get some training from the Arafat School for Homocide Bombers. The elites must surely be laughing.

“...Longtime Australian official Kim Edward Beazley revealed more about NATO’s plans, as the alliance, created in 1949 to counter Soviet expansionism, morphs into a hair-trigger “top cop” for those constructing a world union under the broad planning of the Bilderberg group, in league with a host of world government consensus-builders, including the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and similar World Affairs Councils that reach down to the grassroots.” … “Beazley suggested that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a “super-NAFTA” free-trade scam that these one-worlders want to foist on the Far East to bolster the pending Pacific Union, is a critical goal for global governance. Given the context in which he announced the perceived need for a TPP, it’s highly likely the TPP will be a specific topic, as part of NATO’s eastward expansionism, at the NATO summit itself.”..."

That guy Kim Edward Beazley, is the father of the same horrifically tedious jerk who was Finance Minister (and a really shitful Defence Minister) here during the 1990s, who handed the banksters total private control of all banks, to collude, rape and pillage at will, in Australia.

The problem with this is that Kim Edward Beazley already died, about six years ago!

" ... died in Perth on 12 October 2007, and was accorded a state funeral on 20 October.[5] His memoirs were published posthumously in February 2009.[4] with a foreword by his son Kim Christian Beazley who himself had a distinguished career as a Labor politician and party leader." ..."

So the article is actually referring to his son, Kim Christian Beazley, who's current job is Australia's Ambassador in Washington ... a traitor, a chump, a usable dumbfuck, basically an utter scumbag.

So he is a Trilateral Commission NWO Bilderberger as well?

Now that makes some sense! He was backed by them, he was their puppet all along.

Kim's boss, the PM of the day, Bob Hawke, was also a former left-wing national workers union leader in the ACTU (i.e. an ultra lefty as PM), and of course, a Rhodes Scholar (i.e. another NWO shop-front that manufactured these 'leaders', to order, in the western world). The top-tier of the Australia Labor Party like elsewhere, used socialism to be-friend the people, before letting the banksters in ... to gut them and their national and cultural base.

I had already deteremined that Kim Christian Beazley was one of the key traitorous scum that was actively working against the Australian people's interests, I just didn't understand why he would be doing it.

Now I do know.

I made a previous zh comment about this guy's involvement in letting the Banksters take over in Australia, at this link:

Beazley is likewise a 1973 Rhodes Scholar. And it just so happens that in 1973 his father, Kim Beazley Senior (now dead), was Australia's Minister for Education. And ever since that particular year Australia has been going down a steepening path to extreme Political-Correctness, Multi-culturalism, Nanny-State Socialism and the ever spreading Financialist control of NWO squids.

And the current PM, Julia Gillard is just more of the same slime, only she's actually overtly zionist, and has also massively engaged herself in National Education, as a Minister under PM Kevin Rudd, and Gillard has maintained her involvement in State Education even whilst holding her position as the current Prime Minister!

i.e. These puppets and traitors have clearly identified that State education and the resulting conducive conditioning is a key factor in completing the bankster NWO take-over of Australia, from top to bottom.

Something that in 1972 would have seemed an unlikely development, given how sceptical and rebellious to power the prevailing culture at that time was, and how compliant, spineless and stupified it has become in just one generation of NWO re-education.

What these recent comments by Beazley and the Trilateral Commission do reveal, is that NATO is indeed the primary tool the NWO Banksters have created in order to bring about a global political union and global 'defense' alliance, that can then use its force to, well, force itself on to the rest of the world.

Nice expose on Australia, Element. Here in Switzerland the CB/Bankter cabal came in through the front door, Ospel at UBS and Gruebel at CS. Interestingly, Gruebel later moved to UBS too. Those two banks have balance sheets probably 10x bigger than the GDP of Switzerland. Those 2 banks have been completely subsumbed by the $IMFS and have sold out Switzerland. Simply observe how Blocher was "Strause-Kahned" over the Hildebrand affair, Blocher being the only parliament member would would have resisted the complete anglo-american take over of the SNB and the Swiss financial system.

Kim Beazley....this is the educated prat who committed Australia to the building of the Collins class submarine...by a Swiss firm who had never designed or built a sub in its life, and what an astonishing product the sub proved to be....it made so much noise in the water it was totally useless as a hunter killer, riddled with problems large and small from day one....yep that's our Kim, prize chump with seaweed clusters.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the large majority of the recent bailout went directly to bondholders and bankers. This is exactly what the IMF and its cohorts have been doing for years to third world countries according to Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

Congratulations. Greece has now crossed into the first stages of fascism: state backed private monopolies get direct support out of tax money that everyone pays into, no choice. And those monopolies get invested with powers that the state once had exclusively

Yup. Soon vets will be required to do fracking in North Dakota for a year for private drilling companies. Detroit citizens will be working for GM and Ford in return for food and rent stamps. Then you and I will be working shifts making American-themed souvenirs for export to Chinese yuppies. If we don't we'll have to work in the tar sands for two years.

At least in the US you have Ron Paul and a constitutional movement. In Europe it is 100% socialist zombies who believe that only the state can get them out of their mess. Just look at this article on Greece: the people stop paying their electricity bills and then expect the government to keep the lights on.

LOL! LOL! I wanted to up-arrow you, but the post is suffering from the "1st letter is italicized" problem, which somehow seems to prevent "arrowing" ... (ZH should contact their computer service representative to get this fixed!)

So I can stop paying taxes in greece if I own a home by not having any electricity?

This is genius.

I don't need any stinking power, Ill make my own, with the savings from not paying the electric bill or taxes, I could heat my home by shoving all the bills into a boiler as fuel... ;p and its free.... because if theres one thing that bureaucracies never run out of its paper to mail you with meaningless scribes on it.

The PPC was having financial problems through profligacy and bad management even before the property tax was introduced here. They have been withholding the tax from the Government that HAS been collected see http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_1_26/03/2012_434791. Most people I know do object to the property tax and refuse to pay it but still pay their electricity bills. If there is a power cut here we also lose our water supply. (It has to be pumped into the house) There is no well in the village so you can't go with buckets to collect water (as I have done in the past whilst living in the Philippines) So we are FUCKED.

The shareholders and bankers all get bailed out and cream the money while we suffer.

And please note this wouldn't have happened in November when NO tourists would be arriving we the PEOPLE would have to suffer the power cuts and get on with it.

Don't worry about eviction. As in Greece the ownership rate exceeds - as everywhere in the Club Mediterranee - 80 percent, the Greek inhabitants don't have to fear that. Eviction is something, which will happen only in Germany, where 52% of the people - mostly workers - don't own a flat or house and therefore live in rented accomodation. In addition to it, the Germans have to pay a lot more money for energy (cold Germany) and other public charges. Unfortunately they don't get pensions of their dead relatives and pay - to cap it all - something we call here "taxes". That's the reason, why many Germans - after the pensions in Germany where cut so broad - have to provide additionally personal and privat for retirement arrangement, but as part of Nevercomeback-Target-II-Credits those payments and insurances - mostly asset-backed by federal bonds ("Bundesanleihen") - are also already in the ClubMed. This coherences makes the game more and more easy for the ClubMed to request for more bailouts (newest example: the new growth pact - fundet by ??? and Eurobonds), as our Chancellor is just a chased politician who once decided to start distributing money of people who live in strong austerity for already 15 years - reunification included already 23 years - with her naive imagination to change Greek mentality whithin a couple of month.